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Shitty washing powder doesn’t leave that soft soapy feeling on your fingers. Well, not like the branded stuff does. At first, rubbing your index finger and thumb together, you feel it as a damp powder, somewhere between the consistency of sand and old flour. But a while later, after you’ve washed it off, or after the sweat of your hands has dealt to the persisting grains which you didn’t manage to wipe off onto the front of your jeans, the soapy feeling is all but faded dream, crumbling away.
Dry, the meaningless swirls of your fingerprints, feel now like great mountain ranges. Parched and tumultuous. So dry in fact that, as the adjacent finger pads scrape small circles, you’re left wondering if the white desert of sand you see falling is from the laundry powder or the fingerprints themselves. Either way if you’ve decided to buy the shitty non-branded stuff, you’ll have time to ponder this while you inevitably watch the white flakes falling towards crappy linoleum flooring of the only god damned Laundromat open at this hour. Honestly though, what else do you have to be doing at this hour anyway?
Nothing? Didn’t think so.
Contemptuously staring at the off-white, high-grain powder, Dean contemplated splurging out and going for the liquid stuff for himself. No, his whites didn’t need to be whiter. He’d surely find a better use for the extra 80¢.
The two creaking dryers across the empty room were competing to see which could whirr louder. The one on the left with the faded start button did indeed spin louder, but the crown had to go to the one with visibly frayed wires peering out from under the headboard. It wasn’t that it spun louder, but its cycle was graced by the occasional rattle and clang of a belt buckle which held steadfast to four denim belt loops. The fancy liquid soap may have softened fabric, but it had no effect on the noise of metal on metal.
Hmm. Dean probably should have taken his little brother’s belt out of the jeans before he washed them. Oh well, as long as no one told him, he wouldn’t mind.
Sam was asleep in a motel five minutes away. Though the past few days had been touch and go, he was finally getting better and capable of holding down food. Dean did still however have one bile-soaked washing basket of his own clothes as evidence that this was still a novelty.
It was okay though. In all honesty, Dean relished the opportunity to be away from the motel. It wasn’t that he liked leaving Sam alone; it’d taken every argumentative trick in Sam’s almost-lawyer repertoire to get him out the door, but Dean just savoured the mundane activity. Here he could be annoyed by the faulty machines upping the humidity, making his faded brown leather jacket stick to the back of his neck. Here he could worry if the motor oil would wash out of his grey Henley saving the top from a permanent stain. Here, on this unmopped, black-and-white checked battle ground, the only casualties he had to worry about were buttons, not brothers.
Dean was standing at one end of a long metal sink, the subtle streaks of rust catching on his already weathered jeans. The dryers clicked. The overhead fluorescents crackled. The 8-minutes-late wall clock continued its dull tick. Nevertheless, despite its efforts, the Laundromat could not cover the muffled grunts of Dean trying to save the navy shirt that his brother had vomited blood on the night before.
He scrubbed at a garment with a brutish resolve. The handle on the blue, plastic laundry brush had long since snapped off, so Dean had to hold it by its sides, his fingers stabbing into the once-white bristles.
Right now, all that he wanted was for the dark brown blotch to be gone. It was a good shirt; Sam had given in to him years back and he’d managed to keep it fairly clean ever since. In fact he’d only gotten blood on it once. Two years ago or something.
Dean had employed it as a bandage after Sam had run in with a werewolf. The injury was one of the worst that life had ever dealt Sammy, he was entirely out of action for over a week. Still, Dean had saved the day and gotten him back to happy, jogging, shitty-salads-eating, terrible-music-listening health in what seemed like no time.
He’d managed to save the shirt too.
But this fucking stain... Dean’s brow furrowed and his knuckles whitened around the flimsy plastic brush. He could fix this. The shirt had been through worse. Dean started scrubbing harder. He could feel his hand beginning to cramp but he didn’t care.
Dean just wanted this stain to be gone. He just wanted the shirt to be back to normal. Scrubbing faster and more desperately, the fumes from nearby cleaning product must have gotten in his eyes, because his vision fogged slightly.
He just needed to save this fucking shirt, it was his job. Yet now, it seemed as if the blotch was laughing at him.
“You can get grave dirt and demon blood out of a three piece suit but what is the mighty Dean Winchester to a small blot of Sammy vomit?”
A wave of fury engulfed him, the simple scrubbing growing bestial. He needed to fix this shirt. It was his one and only job and he was failing at it.
With single minded determination Dean scrubbed harder and harder, begging, pleading. He had to save the shirt. He had to for Sammy. It was his job. He would do whatever he had to. Dean scrubbed faster, harder, with all his might. He could do this. HE COULD FIX THIS!
The brush snapped in his hand.
The furious motion stopped. Dean’s head slunk low, his eye closed, his failure looming above, raining down like some venomous cloud. Defeated, Dean hunched forward, alone in the downpour.
“Child, you’re going to wanna let that soak for a spell. And honey, this ain’t no job for plain water and brute force.”
Dean felt a small, frail hand rest on his back and guide the shirt from his clutching hands into the water.
The hand belonged to an elderly black woman. Her short, dark grey curls were held back on one side with a cheap butterfly clip, and were bouncing free against a leathery cheek on the other. Dean didn’t dare meet her gaze, and instead looked down at the broken plastic in his hands.
“Hon, don’t go thinking you’re some superman. Some of these brushes are as old as I am.” She giggled and ducked her head, looking up at him, “You mind?”
The youthful crinkle of her nose and mock-jeer of her raised eyebrow betrayed the network of lines carved around her eyes and the years written on her brow.
“Uhh, no.” Dean, disoriented, obliged and stepped slightly to the left.
The woman was a blur of motion, setting down a brown handbag a pulling out a small Tupperware pot of white powder which she rubbed into the stain.
“We’re just gonna let that soak for a bit and it’ll be good as new. When I was a little girl, my momma always told me that there ain’t nothing that can’t be fixed with a little bit of love, faith, and baking soda. Now child, tell me, you ain’t no hoodlum are you?” Dean felt her deep brown eyes peer into him, the light catching on them like glass buttons.
“No, ma’am.”
“Good, you don’t seem the type. But if you ain’t up to no mischief, what’re you doing with blood all over your nice blue shirt?”
“I—uhh…” Dean stuttered. Caught off guard, he was taking an unexpectedly long time to think up a clever cover.
“Oh honey, you don’t need to tell me nothing. Accidents happen, I know that.” The woman laid a warm hand on his shoulder and let out a laugh that made her shoulders bounce.
. . .
“You know sugar, you remind me of my James. Apple of my eye he is; gonna be a doctor would you believe?” The woman called out as she crossed the room. “I always said he should be a musician, that boy’s got a gift for the piano, but no momma, he said…” Her voice grew tinny as she leant into one of the dyer’s which had finished its cycle “… I’m gonna be a doctor and pay for your to retire in a nice fancy home in the upper districts.”
“You must be proud of your son. Every parent wants to raise a Doctor… or a Lawyer.” Dean muttered to himself.
“Well I’m proudda him alright, but boy when he told me he was going to med school, I have not been more mad.” Confused, Dean’s eyes snapped towards her, to see her folding one of Sam’s tops and placing it in a basket.
“Uhh—you don’t need to do tha…”
“Nonsense, it’s no bother. Now where was I? Oh yes. My James, he would not listen to reason! I swear, if his daddy was still here— God rest his soul— he wouldda whacked some sense into that boy. Why would he wanna do something as stupid as going to med school? Lord knows he doesn’t wanna be a Doctor.”
“… but he did it to give you a nice life and make you happy.”
“What! And make himself miserable doing it? Honey, I always believe family comes first, and you gotta love them and do what you can to make them happy, but that don’t mean making yourself miserable. That don’t make them happy. If y’all truly love each other, when one of you is miserable, you all is miserable. When one of you is happy, you all is happy. If you love each other, that will be enough… Honey, why don’t you make yourself useful and go grab me one of them bags from there, so I got something to put these in.”
She began to pack Sam’s freshly folded clothes into the scraggy plastic bag with a printed logo from a nearby supermarket chain.
. . .
The woman’s baking soda had done the trick. When Dean lifted the shirt out of the sink water he could see the stain pull away in little, dark-brown rivulets. The toxin bled out into the cloudy water leaving the shirt good as new.
Dean filled the washing machine with his clothes and walked over to the soap dispenser. He filled his plastic cup with white crumbs of washing powder that clumped together in the humidity, and walked back to his station.
“Boy, I saw you use that nice liquid soap on your brother’s clothes over there, what you doing using this cheap junk on yours?”
“Well, I don’t think I need…”
“You don’t think you need or you don’t think you deserve, Hmm?”
Dean looked down into the cup. Despite its inhospitable smell resembling a mixture of bleach and slightly curdled milk, the dank powder had unmistakable hints of mildew. Turning his gaze to the machine, Dean spied the collar of the rescued shirt. Love, faith, and baking soda, right?
Dean remembered once sitting in Bobby’s kitchen with Sammy. The six year old, having found a stash of mothballs which apparently tasted nothing like candy, had developed quite the upset stomach. Dean remembered Sammy crying the whole car ride to Bobby’s as their father readied for another hunt. Dean remembered the Impala speeding off, its back tires flicking gravel up, hitting him in the arm, as soon as Bobby opened the door.
Bobby had grabbed Sam by the hand, walked him inside, and given him his “big-boy hat”. Bobby made Sam laugh with a joke about how as he grew less hair, Sam magically acquired more. Dean remembered bringing the baking soda to Bobby, who, mixing it with some warm milk and brown sugar, gave it to Sam. It did the trick perfectly, Sam was miraculously better in no time— granted from that day onwards he became very aware of what he ate, an obsession which would one day lead him to become 6’4” salad eating behemoth. What a dork.
Dean chuckled under his breath. His eyes returned to the cup of fusty wash-powder.
“Actually, you know what…” Dean looked back towards the dryers but the woman was gone. “Ma’am?” He realised he’d neither caught her name, nor thanked her.
Dean skulked around and stuck his head out the door, but saw no trace of her. She must have run off to spread her bounty of maternal skill elsewhere.
Walking over once more to the soap dispenser, Dean poured out the white crumbs and coined in his $2.80. As the sweet smelling, syrupy detergent filled his cup, Dean inspected the wall to his right. Photos and pictures of relatives and loved ones. The Laundromat’s owner family no doubt.
A photo of a family dinner. A little girl on a bike. A teenage boy graduating high school. An intimate polaroid of a young woman, arms out, holding the camera, snuggled in close on a couch to a sleeping man with a stethoscope draped around his neck. The couple at the statue of liberty. A puppy. A young girl in bright pink tutu and ballet shoes, brandishing a cupcake, smiling. Her dark complexion radicalised the pink icing smears. A photo of the little girl sitting on her father’s lap at a piano, him teaching her a song. The girl, older, brace-faced, dragging her mother around a zoo excitedly.
Dean’s gaze fell on a framed picture of an old woman. Short grey curls, defiantly bouncing off her plump cheeks, bound only by a cheap butterfly clip on one side.
RIP Grandma Gladys, Gone but never forgotten:
“When one of you is happy, you all is happy. If you love each other, that will be enough.”
Dean felt a smile draw itself across his face as he returned to his washing machine. He let the silky washing detergent slip past the fingertips on one hand as he drizzled it into the machine. Soft. Soapy. Nice.
As the machine rumbled and clanked, Dean’s thoughts shifted to Sam. He took a deep breath. Dean would take clothes back to the motel and go and do a grocery run.
Pie. Beer. Salad. Salt... oh and yes… Baking soda.
Sam would pull through, Dean could feel it. He didn’t know how, or why, he just knew that the two of them would get through this. They were there for each other, and that would be enough.